MailChimp

David McCarty of APMEX Hits the ROI Jackpot

Director of Marketing, American Precious Metals Exchange

Most marketers know that email marketing can generate some great ROI. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that email (usually about a penny per recipient) is way more cost effective than traditional postal mail. But when David McCarty, Director of Marketing for American Precious Metals Exchange (APMEX) called me to tell me their first email campaign with MailChimp generated over $157,000 in revenue for their company, I was pretty amazed. I had to interview him...

First of all, why did you use MailChimp?

Because of the Google Analytics Integration. We had been sending email campaigns through another provider, but we never saw what kind of return we were getting. With MailChimp, I could just check one little box, and then track exactly how many email recipients clicked over to my website, how many purchased, and how much money they spent.

We were also attracted by the interface. It was so easy to use---we just got it. It was as easy as falling off a log.

Without revealing any secrets, can you tell us if you did anything special to get these results?

The campaign was somewhat targeted. It was our first campaign sent through MailChimp, so we only sent it to a portion of our customer list, just to be safe.

In general, we usually run certain queries on our customer database (purchase history and other behavioral data), before setting up our email campaigns.

$157,000 seems like an unbelievable amount of money to make from one little email campaign.

It's a large sum of money, but that's normal when you're dealing with gold and other precious metals. So you have to consider the profit margin on that $157,000. And the profit margins we got from this one email campaign has paid for our email marketing for the remainder of this year. Every campaign we send from now on is pure profit, and that's what's truly exciting for us.

Learn how you can track email marketing ROI with MailChimp and Google Analytics.